Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Former Vice President Al Gore is picking a fight with Fox News over a year-old management memo that he says betrays a bias against global warming science.

"Fox News has consistently delivered false and misleading information to its viewers about the climate crisis," Gore wrote on his website. "The leaked e-mails now suggest that this bias comes directly form the executives responsible for their news coverage."

Gore was referring to a Dec. 8, 2009 memo attributed to Fox News' Washington Managing Editor Bill Sammon and posted by the liberal-leaning website Media Matters, according to The Hill newspaper. In the memo, Sammon wrote, "Given the controversy over the veracity of climate change data, we should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts." Media Matters said the memo went out just after a Fox News correspondent reported that the United Nations World Meteorological Organization had said 2000 to 2009 was the warmest decade on record.

The prevailing view in the scientific community is that it's getting hotter -- and the warming is due to human activities such as energy production from coal-fired power plants. But there are dissenters, some of whom suggest that the warming is cyclical and not man-made.